Adventist Teaching: Yes
Biblical Teaching: No
The Seventh-day Adventist Church affirms and teaches what is historically recognized as the Kenosis heresy, rooted in a misinterpretation of Philippians 2:6-7. This heresy asserts that in the incarnation, Christ emptied Himself of some or all of His divine attributes (e.g., omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence) to become fully human. Proponents argue this “emptying” was necessary for Christ to live as a genuine man. It is a rather modern heresy that traces its roots back to Gottfried Thomasius in the 19th century.
The Adventist Position
Spawning from the writings of Ellen G. White, which the SDA Church believe to be divinely inspired and correcting of inaccurate interpretations of scripture, she writes:
The Holy Spirit is Christ’s representative, but divested of the personality of humanity, and independent thereof. Cumbered with humanity, Christ could not be in every place personally. Therefore it was for their interest that He should go to the Father, and send the Spirit to be His successor on earth. No one could then have any advantage because of his location or his personal contact with Christ. By the Spirit the Saviour would be accessible to all. In this sense He would be nearer to them than if He had not ascended on high.
Ellen G. White, Desire of Ages, pg. 669 (DA 669.2)
This is to say that, upon Incarnating, she claims he sacrificed the divine attribute of omnipresence. It is with statements such as these in mind that the SDA Church states:
Jesus asserted His omnipresence with the assurances “‘Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age'” (Matt. 28:20) and “‘Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them'” (Matt. 18:20). Although His divinity has the natural ability of omnipresence, the incarnate Christ has voluntarily limited Himself in this respect. He has chosen to be omnipresent through the ministry of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-18).
Seventh-day Adventists Believe, pg. 50
This is one of the many insights into the false christology contained within Adventist theology. Jesus demonstrated his omnipresence while Incarnate numerous times as we have demonstrated here.
Furthermore, on their website, the SDA Church also writes:
Philippians 2:6-8 says that even though Jesus is God, He set His divine nature aside and took on human nature. He came to serve us–to show us God’s love for us and live as our example. He came to minister to people through his perfectly obedient life. He obeyed the Father in every way, even when it led to a humiliating death on a cross.
Seventh-day Adventist Church, What Adventists Believe about the Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ
They outright give the Kenotic interpretation of the text on their website when explaining what they believe about Jesus in death.
Infinite Humiliation?
This belief plays a role in their larger Great Controversy paradigm—the novel worldview of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Part of that storyline includes the belief that Satan rejoiced when Adam and Eve fell because he knew that now Jesus would be pulled down from his exalted status. It was this exaltation that supposedly led to Satan becoming jealous and rebelling against God and His law.
Ellen White writes:
Satan again rejoiced with his angels that he could, by causing man’s fall, pull down the Son of God from his exalted position. He told his angels that when Jesus should take fallen man’s nature, he could overpower him, and hinder the accomplishment of the plan of salvation.
Ellen G. White, Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 1, pg. 48 (1SP 48.3)
The story goes that after God the Father and Jesus revealed the “plan of salvation,” Satan rejoiced because now Jesus would come down from his exalted status by taking upon himself man’s fallen nature. Since he was successful with the first Adam, he figured he could be successful with the Second and foil the “plan of salvation.”
This is to say that the Adventist Jesus was not only a man while on earth, but a fallen man with a sinful nature. As Ellen White also claimed:
Christ, the second Adam, came to a world polluted and marred, to live a life of perfect obedience. The race, weakened in moral power, was unable to cope with Satan, who ruled his subjects with cruel authority. Christ came to stand on the field of battle in warfare against all the satanic forces. By representing in his life the character of God, he sought to win man back to his allegiance. Clad in the vestments of humanity, the Son of God came down to the level of those he wished to save. In him was no guile or sinfulness ; he was ever pure and undefiled; yet he took upon him our sinful nature.
Ellen G. White, Review & Herald, December 15, 1896
She claimed that Jesus possessed a sinful nature, but never sinned. You can learn more about this in particular here.
Nevertheless, upon incarnating, Ellen White and the SDA Bible Commentary claim:
It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man’s nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors. He came with such a heredity to share our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life.—The Desire of Ages, pg. 49. Those who claim that it was not possible for Christ to sin, cannot believe that He really took upon Himself human nature. But was not Christ actually tempted, not only by Satan in the wilderness, but all through His life, from childhood to manhood?—SDA Bible Commentary 7:929. Our Saviour took humanity, with all its liabilities. He took the nature of man, with the possibility of yielding to temptation. We have nothing to bear which He has not endured.
Ellen G. White, Faith I Live By, pg. 49 (FLB 49.5)
Here we see further evidence of the kenosis theology of Adventism. The central argument the Kenoticists of the 19th century made was that if their belief wasn’t true, then Jesus wasn’t actually human and couldn’t have been truly human.
But amidst that we also see Ellen White use the phrase “infinite humiliation.” This describes the fact that in SDA theology Jesus will never regain some of what was set aside in the incarnation, such as omnipresence. This is often pointed to by some Adventists who see it as a massive sacrifice that Jesus was willing to make to try and save humanity.
All in all—this teaching runs deeper than the surface within orthodox SDA theology.
The Biblical Position
Philippians 2:5–11 is one of the most profound Christological passages in Scripture. Paul is giving an exhortation for us to serve one another with humility, using Jesus in the incarnation as an example. The text is about Christ’s humility and exaltation upon accomplishing redemption, not about a relinquishing of divine attributes.
When Paul says that Jesus “emptied himself,” he makes it clear what he means by this—he added unto himself human nature, taking the form of a servant. The “emptying” refers to His voluntary decision to lay aside the independent use of His divine rights and privileges, submitting fully to the Father’s will.
By pointing to Christ, Paul is using what He did as an example for us to do likewise. We do not have divine natures to set aside, but we do have the ability to humble ourselves and serve one another. Though Christ is God, He did not cling to His divine status but willingly took on human form to serve and save humanity. The “emptying” is about humiliation, not a loss of essence or attribution. Christ’s divine nature remained intact throughout His incarnation.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), commenting on this passage, lays out perfectly what is being said.
He is said to have ’emptied himself’ in no other way than by taking the form of a servant, not by losing the form of God. For that nature by which he is equal to the Father in the form of God remained immutable while he took our mutable nature, through which he was born of the Virgin. He did not take on his humanity in the simple way that a person puts on clothes, as something exterior to him. Rather he took on human form in a manner inexpressibly more excellent and more intimate than that. The apostle has made it sufficiently clear what he meant ‘He was made to appear in human likeness.’ He was not exhaustively reduced to being a man. He rather assumed the true human estate when he put on the man.
Comments on Philippians 2:6-7
The Kenosis interpretation of this text compromises the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ. Paul tells us in Colossians 2:9 that Jesus is the “fullness of the Godhead bodily” which means, while on earth, He possessed all the divine attributes of God.
